1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to cash dispensing apparatus which delivers selected amounts of currency in paper money, bill or bank-note form to a dispensing station from a stored stack or bundle of bills contained in a magazine. More particularly, the invention relates to a simplified mechanism which endwise removes paper money bills one at a time from a stack thereof and delivers the bills individually, successively, to conveyor means which in turn transports the bills individually to a dispensing station.
Also, the invention relates to a rotary suction currency removal mechanism which selectively individually removes bills endwise from a supply stack of bills in a storage magazine, and which delivers such removed bills endwise individually to conveyor dispensing means from the rotary mechanism without delivering more than one bill at a time.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior cash dispensing apparatus for paper money bills, such as mechanisms shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,077,983 and 3,760,158, which deliver bills from a stack thereof to a dispensing station have stored the bills in a magazine stack with the bills arranged on edge. The edge supported bills in the stack are removed from the stack by an oscillatory suction device that delivers the removed bills to conveyor means, arranged with the length of the bills extending transverse of the direction of bill travel along the conveyor means.
Such prior banknote delivery mechanisms are quite complicated in construction and operation. They have many moving parts which engage the bills. The adjustment and operation of the mechanisms and components must be critically controlled. Further, storing bills on edge and delivering the same with the bill length extending transverse of the direction of conveyor travel requires considerable lateral space in the dispenser housing.
Such lateral space requirements are undesirable, particularly where a dispensing mechanism is desired for dispensing multiple denominations of bills, for example, four different denominations, such as 1, 5, 10 and 20 dollar bills.
Another inherent difficulty and undesirable characteristic of such prior cash dispensing devices is that the detector mechanism for detecting and sidetracking or rejecting bills removed in multiple, rather than individually, from the stack must be incorporated in and coordinated with the conveyor mechanism structure and operation. This complicates the provisions for accurately counting the number of bills delivered at the dispensing station, which counting is an absolute requirement for automatic banking equipment.
Other difficulties in prior structures involve the lack of firmly applying vacuum pick-up suction to an extended area of a bill in removing it from a stack, the lack of engaging the bill in a large area on driving it through the pick-up and dispensing mechanism, the lack of mechanism for holding the bill securely during measurement of its thickness to determine the presence or absence of a single bill, the lack of full bill length presentation for sensing bill thickness so that bill thickness measurements are unaffected by dog-eared bills. Further, prior devices for accuracy require stringent drive controls, speed controls, vacuum requirements, etc.
Thus, there exists a need for a simplified mechanism for effectively removing individual bills from a stack which involves relatively few moving mechanism parts contacting the bills during removal, as well as a minimum of moving parts, and which is compact and inexpensive in construction while retaining maximum security for the bills in the stack contained in the magazine; which mechanism may have a relatively low speed in relation to the output of bills removed from the stack and which handles the bills by simple rotary motions avoiding mechanical oscillation movements; which rotary movement of bills during removal from a stack permits extensive amplification of bill thickness measurements for sensing the existence of multiple bill removal at any one time from the stack; which mechanism avoids criticality in adjustment and operation; which mechanism removes the bills endwise from the stack and delivers the same individually to conveyor mechanism end to end; which mechanism bypasses bills removed from the stack in multiple so that bills in multiple are not delivered to the conveyor mechanism; and which mechanism eliminates or minimizes the stated difficulties or undesirable characteristics encountered in the construction and operation of prior devices.